Summary
Michael and Avy are back for Season 3 of The Pricing Guys with a simple challenge: can pricing professionals guess what everyday products actually cost? They take on shampoo, eye cream, baby formula, a designer T-shirt, marinara sauce, a water bottle, and gum. The results are funny, close, and surprisingly revealing.
Key takeaways
- Price knowledge depends heavily on context and purchase frequency.
- Shoppers use competitive products and familiar price points as anchors.
- A premium brand does not always make its price easy to estimate.
- Retail environments shape value perception before a customer even picks up a product.
- Good pricing decisions require more than instinct. They need data, category context, and practical execution.
The challenge: guessing prices without the usual anchors
The game starts with a familiar travel experience. Michael buys a coffee for $3.25 and asks Avy to guess the price of a standard bottle of water from a hotel. He gets it right: $5.
That leads to the main question: how well do pricing experts really understand the prices of everyday products when they are removed from the shelf, the store, and the competitive set?
Six products are presented one at a time. The players write down their guesses, and whoever gets closest wins the round. A seventh product is held back as the tiebreaker.
The guesses are made in U.S. dollars.
The price guessing results
| Product | Actual price | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Kerastase shampoo, 250 ml | $46 | Michael was closer with a guess of $29.99. |
| Tatcha eye cream, 10 ml | $64 | Avy and Michael were close, guessing $70 and $74. |
| Similac baby formula | $48 | Michael narrowly won the round. |
| Hugo Boss men’s T-shirt | $108 | Avy won after Michael guessed $80 and Avy guessed $200. |
| Rao’s marinara sauce, 660 ml | $8 | Avy took the lead with a guess of $6.95. |
| Owala water bottle | $30 | The players tied again. |
| Wrigley Excel gum, six-pack | About $30 | Michael won the final tiebreaker. |
The products span very different categories, which makes the results even more interesting. Some are frequently purchased, while others are premium or less familiar. Some are bought in stores with many competing options. Others are sold in a more controlled environment.
Why some prices are easier to guess than others
The biggest lesson from the challenge is that price perception is relative. People rarely evaluate a price in isolation. They compare it with what they have seen before, what they expected to pay, and what sits next to it on the shelf.
Take Rao’s marinara sauce. A shopper in a grocery store may see several pasta sauces at different price points. That creates a clear reference range. The shopper can quickly decide whether Rao’s is cheap, expensive, or worth the premium.
A Hugo Boss T-shirt works differently. It is unlikely to be placed beside a $10 basic T-shirt in the same shopping context. The customer may compare it with other designer products instead. The competitive set changes the perceived value.
The same principle applies to the gum sold at Costco. A six-pack priced around $30 sounds high at first. But if the shopper knows that a single pack costs about $5 at a convenience store, the larger price becomes easier to understand. The pack size creates a different frame of reference.
Purchase frequency shapes price memory
Another factor is how often people buy a product. Frequent purchases create stronger price memory.
A shopper may have a very clear idea of what a bottle of water or a pack of gum costs. The same person may have almost no reliable reference for a luxury eye cream or professional shampoo. That lack of familiarity makes the estimate more dependent on brand cues and assumptions.
In practical terms, price awareness is influenced by:
- Purchase frequency — regular purchases create stronger memory.
- Category familiarity — shoppers understand categories they use often.
- Brand positioning — premium brands signal higher value, but not always a specific price.
- Pack size — larger formats can make total prices look high or economical.
- Competitive context — nearby products provide the anchors shoppers need.
- Channel — a hotel, grocery store, warehouse club, and convenience store create different expectations.
What this means for pricing teams
The game is entertaining, but it points to a serious pricing issue. Leaders cannot assume customers see value the same way internal teams do. Even experienced pricing professionals can miss the mark when familiar anchors are removed.
That is why pricing analysis should combine several inputs rather than rely on instinct alone. Customer behavior, competitive prices, transaction data, channel differences, and product attributes all help explain willingness to pay.
At Revenue Management Labs, this is where practitioner expertise and embedded AI work together. AI can identify patterns across large amounts of data and highlight pricing opportunities quickly. Experienced pricing professionals then apply industry knowledge, commercial judgment, and an understanding of how teams actually sell and implement changes.
The answer is not a generic price model. A useful approach must reflect the company’s category, data quality, customer base, sales process, and specific margin opportunities.
A better version of the challenge
Michael and Avy finish by suggesting a more focused test: choose one category, such as pasta sauce, and compare several products at different price points.
That would create a better test of value perception. Instead of guessing unrelated products, the players would compare brands, pack sizes, claims, and price tiers within one competitive set.
For businesses, the same exercise can be useful. Put several products in front of commercial teams or customers and ask:
- Which product appears to offer the most value?
- What would you expect each product to cost?
- What makes one price feel acceptable and another feel too high?
- Which product would you trade down from, and which would you pay more for?
The answers can uncover gaps between the price a company intends to communicate and the value customers actually see.
The final lesson: price perception is rarely obvious
Michael ends up as the price-guessing champion, but the real winner is the reminder that pricing is not just about knowing a product’s cost. It is about understanding the context in which customers encounter the price.
A strong pricing strategy connects data, customer behavior, competitive structure, and execution. The right recommendation only creates value when commercial teams can explain it, customers can understand it, and the business can put it into practice.
And sometimes, even the pricing experts need to look at the shelf before they make a guess.
